Warner: Get past D.C. 'decoder' speak

12/2/12 10:15 AM EST

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) called on Sunday for a move past "Washington decoder speak" to find a deal on the fiscal cliff, noting that lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are willing to "do our part" to avoid a crisis.

"We've got to get past the kind of Washington decoder speak and say specifically, 'How do we get there?'" Warner said on CNN's "State of the Union" regarding finding an agreement to fend off the fiscal cliff. He added, "We need to go ahead and lay down what we're going to get done before the end of the year, and then how we get to that."

Warner expressed optimism, saying that a broad group of stakeholders understand the risks of going off the cliff.

"One of the reasons why I think this time it's going to be different from the failures of the past, the debt ceiling debacle, the failure of the supercommittee, is I think the American people, and particularly the American business community, realize what's at stake," Warner said. "And I think there's an awful lot of us, frankly, in both parties, who are willing to get there."

On both sides of the Senate aisle, he said, lawmakers want to contribute to a deal.

"There's been a big group of us, well in excess of the majority in the Senate, who said, 'We're willing to do our part,'" he said. "We want to give the president and the speaker room to get the framework, but we'll help fill in the details as we go forward."